Name: Chicken Patés
Ingredients: cold chicken, chopped coarsely; coarse sea salt; rich drawn butter (1 large cup); 2 hard-boiled eggs, minced; chopped parsley; pâté pans with good paste

Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Chicken Patés

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Season the chopped chicken well.
In a saucepan, heat the drawn butter and stir in the minced hard-boiled eggs and chopped parsley.
Add the seasoned chicken to the butter mixture and let it almost boil.

Fill and serve

Prepare the pâté pans with the baked paste until light brown.
Fill the hot pans with the chicken mixture and place in the oven to heat.
Arrange on a dish and serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,314 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken: Forms the main body of the pâté filling.
Drawn butter: Adds richness and moisture, binding the chicken and egg mixture together.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add body and a firm, sliceable texture to the filling.
Chopped parsley: Adds fresh aroma and a green, herbal flavour.

The step that matters

Letting the chicken mixture almost boil. Heating the butter and chicken gently without a hard boil keeps the filling moist and tender. Overheating can toughen the chicken proteins and cause the butter to separate, leaving the pâté greasy and dry.